


The Devil Doesn't Live in the Dark

by mantra4ia



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: After Party, Aftermath, F/M, Freeform, Graphic Description, Graphic Imagery, Grief/Mourning, Male-Female Friendship, One Shot, Piano, Romantic Friendship, imagine, let me help, snap out of it, things will turn out better, why are you crying?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 14:19:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8449561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mantra4ia/pseuds/mantra4ia
Summary: This is an Imagine One-Shot between episodes 2x06 "Monster" and 2x07 "My Little Monkey" which includes a backstory of Lucifer's fall and brief imagery of his powers as Samael the Light-bringer. Chloe tries to bring Lucifer out of his grief spiral, while at the same time trying not to slide into her own spiralFreeform, not based on the Sandman comics, set in the FOX TV series timeline.Not suitable for all ages, referencing Lucifer's behaviors and graphic description of the fall.





	

[ (Background music)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MenxJEj7obg&index=94&list=PLDv2zqOu8V63wHB7B5vFjwkiAj4bZmzxH)

**“Does the Devil really need to sleep?”** Chloe's voice wafts from somewhere near the arm chair across the room.

 _Why is she here_ – Lucifer thought - _In my loft? What time is it?_  The more quickly he regained his senses, the more strongly he regretted it. His mind sifted through the quicksand he was waist deep in. Spent liquor bottles (hopefully well spent, though he could not quite remember), vomit (his or someone else's? No matter), and an ashtray filled with peanuts. _What the hell -_ he thought, but it made more sense to him as he glanced over at the bowl of bar nuts that was filled with stubs of ash. Honest mistake.

Lucifer's thoughts were wandering again. One of few downsides to earth is the dullness it forces on a celestial consciousness. This distinctly human grogginess of the senses. No wonder they relied on all sorts of stimulation: coffee, narcotics, sex, all just to stay awake. But out of pure necessity they'd refined these things beautifully - the first well learned lesson that prevailed upon Lucifer when he found LA at the top of his vacation spots. He felt the dullness constantly, though more acutely then they did, along with the side effect of fleeting concentration as he was feeling now. It's a wonder humans had managed to focus long enough to crawl out from beneath the rocks, Lucifer sometimes reflected. All the more reason he admired how far they'd come. Action-based cinema, McCallan 25, food trucks, etc.

He was brought back to attention by a prickly sensation. Lucifer could feel Chloe's eyes on him.

“Of course I don't need it, but how else am I going to remain looking this young,” He tried to cover his acerbic feelings under a smooth current of suave, but something wasn't quite right. He couldn't move.

 “Uh-huh” the voice echoed back again. Lucifer had miscalculated the origin. As he honed his eyes he became aware that the armchair was empty; rather Chloe had taken up a spot on the piano bench, sitting ramrod straight surveying the damage of the loft. “ **And when the devil chooses to sleep, does he have dreams?** ”

Lucifer's alarm was beginning to both fade and flare, as he realized he couldn't move because he was tucked into the couch tighter than one of Pop’s burritos...  _Did Chloe do this?_  his senses sobered up vastly. In sleep, Lucifer was vulnerable. How much had the Detective seen?

“How long have you been sitting there?” he was quite clear not to hide his annoyance and anger this time.

“Just answer my question,” Chloe rebuffed, as she played a C# that punched him in the face with wakefulness. _She is humoring me again_ , he thought, a human attempt to lift my spirit if I had one.

Still, beneath the humor of it Lucifer was aware that something on the edge of Chloe's senses was tingling. **He could quite literally feel it, her thoughts prying up the edges of his illusion,** trying to tear it away. He had resigned trying to convince the Detective who he really was some time ago and, judging from Doctor Martin's recent reaction, was right in doing so. He'd never made a women cry outside of the bedroom before. That response to his true face was altogether new. People had cried out in fear, reacted in rage, none had ever been brought to tears of loss and disillusion. If that was how Doctor Martin chose to express this strange thing called _grief,_ he knew that she was entitled, but without her Lucifer began to feel utterly alone.

_Except for Chloe._

Lesson learned, he would not let Chloe see his face, and redoubled his efforts at projecting a calm and handsome demeanor while he played along with this line of dream questioning. A welcome distraction to him and a tool to occupy her.

“Of course I dream, Detective.” It was the truth, but only insofar as non-lies go. Lucifer had many dreams in his wakeful hours, dreams named Sheila, Posche, and Brittany among others. However in his sleep, when he dreamed, there was only ever one image on his mind, like the vision that Chloe's voice had just startled him from.

“Bad dreams don't count Lucifer.” Chloe probed the keys again and a Bb palpated the air, seeking out the tension and frayed nerves in the room, and finding them in abundance.

“How would you know whether my dreams were good or bad detective? Your nightmare could be my Fiji.”

“I have a child. I've had some practice,” Chloe had learned enough to know that when Lucifer responded defensively in humor, she was on track to results. She decided to keep him off balance while at the same time giving him what he wanted. “2 hours.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It took me two hours to clean up most of this mess. I draw the line at your puke and your death sticks, but the rest of the place is back in order.”

Lucifer took this in a moment while trying to make an estimation of how that place must have looked before she arrived. Records may well have been set. A small grin crept onto his face which Chloe immediately squashed with an F# and E together. “I can appreciate a good Stars Wars reference as much as the next man, but who let you in here?”

“Your ex-” Lucifer was about to interrupt to say that he was going to need to buy a vowel, A for Amanda, E for Erin, or I for Isabelle when Chloe rolled her eyes in anticipation and said, “...bartender, your ex bartender.”

“Yes well, all the more reason to have my locks changed. She's your pet demon now.” Lucifer finally managed to get un-tucked from the blanket, nearly regretting it as he began a slow, cold trek to the bar.

“If only she got in with a key.”

Lucifer missed half a step. “Even I find that mildly disturbing,” Only then it occurred to him, half way between sofa and bar stool, to check whether he had fallen asleep with clothes on. Unfortunately he had, and everything would need to be dry cleaned to get the wrinkles out. Everything...except his jacket which draped neatly on the piano bench, with his shoes and socks beneath it. _How did that get there?  No wonder his toes were nippy._

He was about to pour a 3 finger glass of whiskey when several keys crashed down hard, all at once, and composed a discordant shout that made Lucifer fumble the rocks glass. “Bloody hell, tonight is not the night for favors Decker, what is it that you want?”

“I want my eggs Lucifer, but short of that I just wanted to check in on you and make sure you were alright!”

Lucifer was beginning to think that the reason he wasn't able to crack the Detective, _to drive the truth into her or to sleep with her or both,_ was perhaps that she was already cracked. Another fissure would hardly be noticed. “Yes, well no one asked you to!”

“As a matter of fact Linda did. Coupled by the fact that the precinct got a noise complaint from this address, I had plenty of reasons to come over here and read you the riot act only to find you passed out on the floor. I stuck around to be sure you got through the worst of it, and here you are ready to start all over again. I guess the after-party kept going long after the host burned out in a blaze of glory, and they took all your best bottles with them.”

The alarm came back in waves. “And what exactly did the good doctor say when you spoke to her? How did she seem?”

“She seemed about half the mess that you are, and for her that's quite a fall from grace.” If you could only see the irony, Lucifer thought with a hearty laugh. “Hey! Look at me. This isn't funny Lucifer.”

“Trust me Detective, it is, you just don't see it from where you're standing. Come on over, switch places with me, you'll get the joke.”

“She's worried about you.”

“Well if she's so distraught, tell her to come and face me herself...ha, face me. Therein-lies the problem.”

“She said that she can't manage your case anymore. She said it's too complex for her. I think that scares her and truth be told it scares the life out of me too.” He was stunned into silence a moment by Chloe's turn of phrase, but it was clear that Dr. Martin, despite the shock of learning the his true form, had not shared his secret with Chloe. Not that even Linda could convince her of the truth. “That doesn't mean she doesn't want to help you.”

“Who says I need anyone's help?”

“I do, you all-powerful pain in the ass.” Chloe stood fast to her decision.

“Well well, who made you God? Not that you're not qualified for the part, you might to a hell of a better job than He has lately, but I think Dad might have an objection to someone taking his job....”

“Stop it Lucifer, please!” Chloe stood up from the bench with righteous indignation even Amenadiel could appreciate. “Look around you. Your brother just died and you are well on your way to joining him if you don't own up to that fact that you're up to your eyes in _grief_.”

“My conversations with Dr. Martin are private, you have no business...”

“Yeah well, suck it up. I'm a Detective, Lucifer. I know how to investigate the cases that fall in my purview, especially when they involve my partner. You're not the only one capable of getting to the heart of things!” Chloe set her hand down in exasperation, meaning to rest it on the key cover, but her finger slipped and struck the keys. More specifically, they played a single note. The last note that Uriel had ever tried to play. Lucifer dropped his drinking glass, transforming the entire landscape between them into a minefield of shards and the room collapsed into silence as Lucifer remembered everything. The full weight of it pressed him against the bar.

It was like a spark. Awakening from his stupor Lucifer took in the scene all in all: Linda had sent Chloe here, even when she couldn't bear to see him herself, because of an unwavering compassion. The Detective in turn had cleaned him up, removed his jacket and shoes, she'd gone above and beyond any kindness he was worthy of as she stayed with him until he woke. Her eyes, much like his, were red-rimmed and bleary. Had she been drinking too? No, he came to a sharp realization: she'd been crying.

“Detective, I apologize for raising my voice, but I can't talk about this with you.”

“Can't or won't?”

“Won't. At any rate, not right now.”

“So help me Lucifer, I'm at the end of my wits here. You've got to give me something more to go on, I'm lost.”

“You're not the only one,” Lucifer conceded. At this Chloe wheezed a half sigh and a half laugh.

She paced and under her breath she added, in exhausted frustration, _“I can't even figure out what would make a grown man cry out in his sleep. I've always thought of myself as a good detective, Lucifer. Until today._ ”

 

> _Lucifer knew of the things most humans feared; they were his tools and trade, the majority of their fears without reason or sense. But one thing he knew was primal, instinctual, embedded in their very bones from the time of the angels: the fear of falling. It was always the same in Lucifer's dream, falling through layers of time and space and all manner of things. Almost every book got it wrong, save perhaps a cult comic or two, which Lucifer collected in amusement. It wasn't landing in hell that disfigured and dismembered the soul, not for the most part anyway. It was the descent that reeked the violence. **As best mortal tales could fathom it, it was like a meteor burning up in the heat of the atmosphere, but it was so much more brilliant than that. The fall was like being born and dying in a single stroke: having your body, your form, materialize from the atoms in the air by the hand of Father himself, only to have your skin peel back layer by layer as the very same air rends it from your muscles and sinews. Growing and disintegrating, burning, and always, always screaming with every fathom fallen (Lucifer wondered sometimes if that’s why every human cried as they did when they came into this world), the wind licking incessantly at every seething nerve. Those kind of wounds never healed, only festered.** The devil was not impervious to pain (most pain) because he was superhuman, but rather because he had long ago lost the meaning of pain, the context by which to measure it when compared to that day and the vestiges by which to feel it. That's why most books were wrong. **Samael the light-bringer, the fallen morning star, the devil, would never live in darkness.** He was not a vain entity, there was hardly anything left of him to be vain about. His very flesh was stripped away. Yet even still **Lucifer was a lover of the light. Without it, what would he ever manipulate, bend, and capture to conceal his open wounds from mortal eyes?**_

“ _Falling_.” Lucifer said, his voice trailing off into something like a whisper.

“What are you talking about?”

“I dream that I'm falling, and that it never ever stops. In my dream just now I had a choice: whether to watch Uriel die, or fall.”

“And so you fell.”

“No. I _jumped_.”

Chloe dabbed discreetly at the corner or her red, sore eyes. “Is that what all...” she hesitated to indulge the word that she hadn't believed in for so long, “...all angels dream about?”

“No, just me.”

They looked at each other across the glass spattered floor, like bits of fallen star mocking Lucifer in their beautiful ugliness.

“I guess, for now that's as good a start as any for a substitute therapist.”

“Does that new title come before or after "Detective?'”

“After 'Detective' but before 'Devil's probation officer.'” Chloe clarified.

“Ha-ha.”

“And I get a laugh out of you. I'm doing pretty well for my first session. And I don't charge by the hour.”

“I suppose I'll just have to owe you a favor.” Lucifer felt at least a little like his old self now. _The Devil you know,_ he mused silently to himself.

Chloe broke free of her piano crutch and stepped with care across the room. She handed Lucifer his dinner jacket. “You don't owe me anything Lucifer, _just be okay_."

Lucifer's small smile shifted somberly as he thought very hard on what he could tell her that wasn't a lie. “I'll get there in the end, Detective. You have my word.”

"And you should really get someone to look at that burn.” Chloe added as an afterthought.

"What?!"

"On your neck. It must have happened sometime during your house block party. You don't remember? Doesn't it hurt?"

"I'm sure it'll be fine, it's just a flesh wound. But if it makes you feel any better I'll have Maze look at it tomorrow." Lucifer had slipped. _Keeping up his mortal guise, always contorting the light to create an illusion, required constant effort and exertion and vigilance.  In his distress, exhaustion, and fitful sleep, a part of the illusion had faded. A part that Chloe noted immediately._

She gave him a sidelong glance. "It's troubling that your ninja bodyguard is also your off-the-books medic."

"Troubling to us both, I assure you."

Chloe forced a smile in hopes of rekindling his, “just promise me to buckle up Lucifer.” The same words he'd said to her in care, she took to heart. Chloe hoped that Lucifer would take them in kind. Quickly she made for the elevator to exit the loft, not daring to look behind as she broadly gestured to the broken glass, “and I am not cleaning that up.”

“Chloe,” Lucifer's voice caught up to her as she impatiently waited for the lift doors to open.

What started off as an attempt to say “thank you...for everything” shortly convoluted into “why were you crying?”

The elevator door opened. As Chloe stepped within she said, “It's not my turn.”

“I'm sorry...what?” Lucifer was perplexed.

Chloe turned, and spoke more clearly, but without looking at Lucifer - more likely through him. “The rule is only one of us can fall apart at a time. It's not my turn. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, right...” Lucifer tapered off with a wrinkle to his brow and a new distraction to ease his nagging, throbbing grief. And Chloe? The elevator slid shut and she descended. A prisoner in the state penitentiary had been murdered. The man sentenced to life in prison for killing John Decker. And she had been asked to consult in the investigation. 

> **But it was not her turn to fall. Not yet.**


End file.
